You Have My Sympathy
by BregoBeauty
Summary: She watches him bleed from the wounds she caused, yet she still cannot find it in herself to hate him. How close is pity for your captor to insanity?


**You Have My Sympathy**

**Disclaimer:** I don't own anything related to _Red Eye_!

**Summary:** She watches him bleed from the wounds she caused, yet she still cannot find it in herself to hate him. How close is pity for your captor to insanity?

_Gasp… Rasp… Pant…_

That's all that Lisa Reisert could hear. It was the sounds of the labored breathing of one man. His name, according to him, was Jackson Rippner and he was dying on the hardwood floor of the entry hall at her father's house. A bullet hole pierced his chest; crimson blood stained his light-colored shirt as his chest heaved. Another bullet was lodged in his side. He had a burgundy scarf wrapped around a pen-inflicted wound on this throat. A dark red stain upon his pin-striped dress pants betrayed another recent injury—from a heel that she had rammed into his thigh.

To think that she had once been at the mercy of this broken, battered man lying before her was laughable. She had effectively turned the tables upon him.

Yet… all she could feel was pity. Had he really deserved the hell she had put him through?

_A charming man behind her in line—he had helped her stop an irate passenger from harassing a hard-working woman. His crystal blue eyes were intriguing and playful._

_"So you're on this, uh…" he said, trying to make small talk as they stood in the check-in line._

_"Very delayed flight to Miami. Yeah. You?" _

"_Yep, sadly yeah," he replied and they both nodded. "But you know what? That's why God created the Tex-Mex. The best nachos in the airport and right across from our gate." _

_She nodded slightly and smiled. "Good tip. Thanks."_

_Curiosity filled his voice as he boldly asked, "Save you a seat?"_

"_Oh, um, ah… " She smiled brightly and released a nervous giggle._

_He chuckled lightly. "Yeah, you know that was… I just thought since we're on the same flight… I didn't mean to invade your personal space or…"_

He had been nothing more than a harmless passenger on the same extremely delayed flight that she had a ticket for. Where had it all gone horribly wrong?

"_Oh, the name's Jackson by the way," he said, reaching out to shake her hand._

"_Lisa." She shook his proffered hand._

"_Pleased to meet you."_

When had he stopped being a friend—a possible lover even—and become her bitter enemy? Had it been in the Tex-Mex bar after she learned the story behind his unfortunate name? No… that was not it.

"_You're kidding. You're not kidding. Um, you need a bellhop?" Jackson said, rising from his seat._

"_Uh, no, no, no, that's okay," she said, shaking her head._

_He bent down to grab her suitcase. "Let me help. I insist."_

"_Uh!" Lisa cried out as she backed into the low ceiling of the plane._

"_You okay?"_

Caring; just another façade or the real Jackson Rippner? Lisa was unsure. She knew that she should hate him, but she could not find a point to hate him from. She loathed their chase, but when had he stopped being friends and become the killer that she had bested? Where was the line?

The head-butt was not it—he had just been trying to calm her down and keep her quiet. It was not to be cruel. It was only to protect her.

"_You really need to start worrying about your dad more…" he snapped at her._

Something in his tone indicated to her that he was in danger too. He was begging and pleading to be saved as well.

Had it been the bathroom then, where he had found the horrid scar and assaulted her?

"_You know what I think?" Jackson challenged, as he sun her around and shoved her against the sink beside the mirror, while tightening his grasp upon her slender throat with both hands. "You know what I think? I think you're not such an honest person. Because I followed you for eight weeks now and I never once saw you order anything but a fucking sea breeze!"_

No, he had been understandably upset. She had nearly gotten him into trouble with all of her lies. They would have both been in deep shit had her message been found. He was protecting her. He cared about her. His face, when he found the scar, told her so.

She could not hate Jackson Rippner. He had only ever been trying to help her and himself. He was an unwillingly pawn—as trapped as she was. He was only trying to do his job and help her at the same time.

"I'm sorry," she whispered as the sirens grew louder. "I'm so sorry, Jackson. I understand now."

"Leese…" _Rasp…_

She knelt down beside him, a hand covering his bleeding, heaving chest. "Ssh, don't talk."

"Lisa, get away from him!" called Joe, his hands reaching for her arms to pull her up an away from the manager. "He tried to kill you!"

"No, dad! No! He was trying to help me!" Lisa protested as her father lifted her up from the floor.

"He's a killer—he was going to kill us both!"

"You don't understand! That wasn't him! That wasn't Jackson!"

"Lisa, no! He's twisted your mind. He hurt you, sweetie. He kept you hostage on an airplane," Joe tried to reason with her

Two Emergency Medical Technicians entered the house, a stretcher in hand. Lisa broke away from her father's grip and returned to Jackson's side. He was a good person—a friend. Her only true friend. He had only been trying to help her.

"Stay…" Jackson weakly rasped, grabbing her hand.

"I won't leave," she promised, following the stretcher from the semi-destroyed house.

"Ma'am," one of the men said. "You have to let go now."

"Sorry," Lisa apologized and released his paper-white hand. Jackson was loaded onto the ambulance. She went to climb in after them, but the door shut in her face. As Lisa pounded on the door, she heard a gun shot reverberate within the metal box and screamed.

"Jackson!"

She yanked the door open and rushed to him. A neat red hole in the center of his forehead caught her watery green eyes. "No," she whispered, shaking her head vehemently. "No…not Jackson."

The EMTs were gone; vanished into thin air.

"I'm so sorry, Jackson. I'm sorry."

Lisa was still sitting there when the police arrived, a gun held loosely in her right hand. Despite her story of hearing an EMT shoot him, she was found to have been the one to fire the fatal shot. After he had been loaded into the ambulance, while the EMTs went back inside to grab their bags; she had crept inside, the gun in her hands. By the time they had returned, it was too late. Jackson Rippner was already dead.

All the therapists later said that her actions were related to the psychological trauma she had endured with him. Stockholm Syndrome had set in first; allowing her to rationalize his behavior. Then, something inside her had snapped and her survival instinct had returned, causing her to kill Jackson. She killed him, yet she could not see herself killing him but rather an unknown person. She saw exactly what she wanted to see and nothing more.

Over and over again, she repeated, "I'm sorry."

And she was. She was sorry for not seeing through the lies and she was sorry for hurting him. She had never meant to hurt him and vice versa.

But, as he had once told her, sometimes bad things happen to good people… and she had given him her sympathy.

**Author's Notes:**

This one-shot has been haunting me for a few months, so I thought I'd finally write it down. It's a departure from my usual JxL stories. It's definitely not a happy piece or a romance. But we all need a change of pace sometimes. Enjoy!


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